Search This Blog

Watandost in Urdu, Turkish and Farsi means "friend of the nation or country". The blog contains news and views about Pakistan and broader South West Asia that are insightful but are often not part of the headlines. It also covers major debates in Muslim societies across the world.

Khwaja’s murder points to home truths By Zaffar Abbas (Dawn)

ISLAMABAD: Horrific as it was, the brutal killing of an ex-ISI man and pro-Islamist campaigner Khalid Khwaja by members of an Islamist group is also a stark reminder of how the sudden intensification of militancy over the last couple of years, especially by the so-called Punjabi Taliban, is to a large extent a direct reaction to the events of Lal Masjid.

It’s been almost three years since the Pakistan Army stormed the militant-infested Lal Masjid and its adjacent Madressah Hafsa, killing more than a hundred people, including many women and the firebrand cleric Abdur Rasheed Ghazi.
As it turned out, such use of military might was an overreaction by the then president Pervez Musharraf to the killing of some army commandos. Ignoring the advice of some of his commanders against the abandoning of negotiation process, he had ordered the use of brute force against a handful of militants and others holed up inside the mosque and the Madressah.

As it soon dawned on the authorities the killing of armed militants and razing of the women’s Madressah in the heart of Islamabad to the ground sent a wave of anger and hatred amongst Islamist groups.

The blowback was so severe that the country’s security establishment is still trying to cope with the situation.

Khalid Khwaja’s abduction and violent death have added an entirely new dimension to the militant movement. Indications are that his abductors and a few other new factions of the so-called Punjabi Taliban, mostly drawn from the former mainstream pro-Kashmiri groups, regard the Pakistan Army and its intelligence outfits as their biggest enemies.

And Mr Khwaja’s taped ‘confessional statement’, which he was forced to record, clearly shows such militants are not prepared to forget the Lal Masjid saga.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Inside Story about Musharraf-Mahmood TussleHassan Abbas: September 24, 2006

General Pervez Musharraf’s memoir In the Line of Fire is expected to generate a lot of debate and discussion in the days to come. Except some western journalists and Musharraf’s close friends (three ghost writers) hardly anyone has had a chance yet to read the book from cover to cover. The excerpts of the book leaked through Indian media and General Musharraf’s statements to some American media outlets however have already created some controversies. In the United States, controversy is considered a positive thing, so the book is bound to become a bestseller here, but in Pakistan probably the opposite is true.

This article is not a review of the book (as I haven’t got hold of a copy yet), but it endeavors to throw some light on the widely reported Musharraf comment about the Armitage threat conveyed through Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed, the then Director General of the ISI. I had done research on this speci…

Confronting Extremism Through Building an Effective Counter-NarrativeThis article was originally published in the Development Advocate Pakistan on April 25, 2016.

While Pakistan is using kinetic means to push back terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), it is still struggling to find an antidote to religious extremism and bigotry that provides space for extremist thinking and consequent violence across the country. The ideas of pluralism, religious harmony and openness to diverse political views have slowly given way to narrow mindedness, sectarianism and intolerance. The democratic experience is equipping Pakistan to revive its balance in the socio-political domain, but it is a fact that the social space in the country today is highly contested between extremist and progressive elements of society.

The blame for these trends within the media and policy circles of Pakistan is often directed towards regional confli…

As expected, the government of Saudi Arabia has refused to lift the ban on Pakistanis below the age of 40 years from performing umra. It was futile on the part of federal religious affairs minister Mohammad Ejazul Haq to visit Riyadh to try and make the Saudis change their mind on the issue. The Saudis formulate their policies after much thinking and in line with their national interest and decisions once taken are rarely changed.

Back home, Ejazul Haq sounded defensive when he told reporters that the ban would stay because the Saudi government had complained that over 100,000 Pakistanis had overstayed in Saudi Arabia after reaching there on the pretext of performing umra. Before leaving for Saudi Arabia, he had expressed concern over the Pakistan-specific umra restriction and had promised to take up the matter with the Saudi authorities. One could understand that he was on a weak wicket and could only request the Saudis…